Breathing in Time and Space

Summer is my upper.  I've been enjoying time with my family, warm (ish) days by the pool, playing outside until it's dark.  I'm up.  I feel very up.  I've also been taking time to indulge one of my great loves -- reading.  Recently, I've read Carry On Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton (more on this) Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott, The Girl On the Train, and repeatedly fell asleep to You are Here: A Portable History of the Universe.  I've learned a lot of things from these books.  My favorite beyond favorite book I've read in a long, long time is Carry On Warrior.  Like go out and buy this book NOW.  Melton, with whom I agree on almost everything, wrote, "reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale."  Well said.  After a long slow breath in, I need the release of writing.

Except, I don't really know exactly what I have to say, so bear with me as I find it.  Today is July 15th (I'm laughing as I write this because there's no way I will publish this today. I have four loads of laundry on my couch, a full dishwasher of clean dishes, a full counter of crusty dishes, a garage that smells like a frat house thanks to the beer pong tournament we hosted last night, and a kid that's going to wake up any second.  Oh and hair that looks like a chia pet, and I get to go out on a date tonight, and I'm hoping my date isn't into chia pets.  Why am I writing right now!?  Something about breathing?) Anyway, July 15th is a special day in my world because it marks Eric's and my NINTH ANNIVERSARY.  This is difficult for me to admit only because it sounds like I am OLD, and to some of you I am, and to some of you I am not, and this just makes me feel kind of confused about if I'm old or young?  Earlier this week as we were taking yet another summer road trip, I told Eric I was so excited for Wednesday, the 15th! And he was like yeah! And before I could let him finish i was like, "it's Amazon Prime day and I'm just sure there's going to be a bouncy house on clearance for Grace!" And he shot me a knowing look and was like, "Yeah! And our ninth anniversary!" And then we laughed and high-fived. I digress.

Let's just say I'm glad I let my eyebrows grow in.

He was 27 here. He looks like a baby.

I'm glad I discovered make up, even if it took me 9
 years longer than it should have. And I'm glad Eric has an awesome haircut.

Getting older is so great because I know so much more about myself and the people I love and care for. I'm learning what works for me to declutter my brain when I get overwhelmed, to become more present when life seems to take over -- writing, a really fast walk outside, belting out a few bars of The Last Five Years, cleaning my living room, organizing a messy drawer or closet.  Eric needs to smack talk teenagers via the gaming interwebs, or watch some inane nonsense on TV, or prepare a masterpiece on the grill (I prefer this one).  Grace needs a snuggle, a push on the swing, or a glass of orange juice.  Sometimes all at the same time. I know these things about the people I love, and I am glad because it helps make life easier for everyone when we can honor one another where we/they are at, especially when they are overwhelmed just by the day-to-day-ness of life.  Getting older has taught me this, and getting older is marked by the passage of time, and if there's one thing I learned from the sooo interesting and sooo boring Portable History of the Universe, it's that time, along with it's sister (gemini twin? fifth cousin once removed?) space, are concepts my pea brain has a really hard time understanding.  Did you watch the movie Interstellar?  The one with McConaughey, where he's an astronaut and he comes back through time and pushes on the book in his daughter's room?  Try as I might I CANNOT RETAIN HOW THIS IS POSSIBLE EVEN THOUGH ERIC'S EXPLAINED IT TO ME A MILLION TIMES.  Time, you fickle little bycz, what are you?  Space, you crazy, mystifying frontier, how can I exist within you if I CANNOT UNDERSTAND YOU.  I just learned that, based on statistical probabilities, there's likely 100 billion other planets like Earth right within in our galaxy.  Please re-read that sentence and really focus on it, like you're in first grade reading in front of the class out loud. 100 billion other potential Earths. And we just learned about Pluto less than a century ago. So I'm going to go ahead and say, it's likely there are more Earths, and it's likely none of us knows jack sh*t about anything, really.

I recently listened to a TED talk about time, and one of the big take-aways was how older people often identify themselves as happier compared to the rest of the population.  Older people are more content because time has given them an opportunity to explore and get comfortable with the person they are, insecurities and all. Older people embrace the vulnerable parts of themselves and others, instead of masking it with all fifty shades of crazy like young people tend to do. I'm striving to be old in this way.  I find myself looking at life through a new lens, through the lens of a new parent...and I think this is the beginning of the journey to old.  Enough time has passed in my own life that I feel like I know myself and maybe just a smidge about the world, and  I feel hopeful because now, with Grace, the future is limitless.  Anne Lamott wrote, and I'm paraphrasing because I've already returned the book, having a kid made her suddenly have to care about stuff she was very content not to have to care about. I'm not doing this justice because she didn't make it sound like a death sentence or some great ball and chain she had to lug around, but more like, the smoke and mirrors of what she thought life was, was revealed to her as, in fact, smoke and mirrors. And then she had to care about BIG stuff.  I hear that. Getting older. Raising kids. Screwing up. Time and space.

And yet, it's a bit of a double edge sword, this parenting lens.  All the stuff I've learned, all the tools for coping with life that I've crafted for my personal journey...these goods don't transfer over to Grace.  She's got to get her own back pack with her own map and her own estrella...Oh god too much Dora. For real though, she's got to do it on her own.  And suddenly those over-bearing, overly meddlesome parents make a heck of a lot more sense to me than they used to. Another quote from Lamott, and this one's verbatim: “I heard an old man speak once, someone who had been sober for fifty years, a very prominent doctor. He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago that his profound sense of control, in the world and over his life, is another addiction and a total illusion. He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver's seat.”  RIGHT?

Getting older reminds me of that almost insufferably trite cliche:  the more I learn the more I realize how much I do not know.  I don't really know anything.  I think the reason those old people are happy is because they realize it's okay to not know. It's okay not to know the meaning of life and it's okay not to understand time and space and it's okay to not know how to be a parent, because the trying of these things is what makes a life.  The fear of these things is what makes regret.  The absolute, unwavering understanding of these things is what makes a pompus a-hole.  I think the only reason I have the confidence to sit behind my Mac Book with my chia hair is because I don't know jack, and I want you all to know that.  I am very comfortable with you knowing that.  I prefer you know that, actually, so you don't ask me to do something hard.

So you've spent your precious time with me, meandering on my exhale, and I hope you don't think of it as a waste. I hope you find tools to make your trajectory through time and space as easy and light as they can be.  "For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."  JC said it himself, man.  Keeping it real as we journey through time and space together.

It's July 16th.  Not bad!